But the idea that FN would be more leftist in any sense, did not struck me so far. I would rather have thought that most the traditional French understanding of "the left" just dissolved. Maybe I need to think again.

I agree. The traditional understand of the "left" dissolved when the parties of the "left" collapsed. It continues to astonish me that the "Socialist" president of France venerates Jean Baptiste Say and will not defend the thinking and historic achievements of his PS predecessors.

To be clear, I don't think it's so much that the FN is moving "left" as the fact that the left is so terrified of sounding extreme (or outside the neoliberal orthodoxy)that they've simply abandoned any defense of the social welfare state or the middle class. For reasons that I do not understand, the FN has picked up these very popular positions and now finds itself increasingly the only defender of the social welfare state and the only opponent of unrestrained globalization.

There have been a great many economic and political thinkers of the left who have been urging the PS in France and Labour in England to reclaim these issues but the leadership of those parties (and of the left generally) seems to be more interested in ingratiating themselves with the financiers and oligarchs.

@Mitch ... and now Valls has totally capitulated suggesting the Left in France has had it and the Socialists are in danger of disappearing, all during a speech to rally his party! You couldn't make it up. See Reuters report "French PM warns disgruntled Socialists they could 'disappear' " and Les Echos for more detail.

@ Mitch Guthman "the leadership of those parties (and of the left generally) seems to be more interested in ingratiating themselves with the financiers and oligarchs" -> that may be the root of the issue. Every party needs connections with financiers and oligarchs, but it seems that (since the times of Naouri/Bérégovoy, I guess) the PS found it had to choose between these connections, and leftist ideas, and preferred the smell of power to the power to change.

Why? Perhaps there is not much social pressure for *change* in France. A "defense of the social welfare state or the middle class" looks like a very conservative agenda — in the meaning of: avoiding change, not pushing for change. I can imagine that, as soon as the PS elephants felt there was no true need for change (say, with Mitterrand's 1988 "ni-ni"), they admitted that "left" would remain only as a place on the political stage — not any more as the driving force of political move.

I remember the (not-French) "Euston manifesto" which sounded a bit like that: "we are the left, and here is the list of things we don't believe in any more".

Well, I felt some compassion, for sure, but put otherwise: if we, at the Center, don't feel that way, it just means we haven't been able to make our own agenda been enforced since decades. So, we should feel more envy towards the left, than compassion!

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I have been a student and observer of French politics since 1968. In that time I've translated more than 130 books from the French, including Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. I chair the seminar for visiting scholars at Harvard's Center for European Studies and am a member of the editorial board of French Politics, Culture, and Society and of The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville. You can read some of my writing on French politics and history here and a short bio here. From time to time I will include posts by other students of France and French politics (accessible via the index link "guest"). My hope is that this site will become a gathering place for all who are interested in discussing and analyzing political life in France. You can keep track of posts on Twitter by following "artgoldhammer".